One of Greater Los Angeles’ very cool evolving areas is Highland Park. From music venues with an independent community scene, to vegan cafes, to dollar stores, to long standing local favorites to new privately owned specialty shops Highland Park is eclectic and surprising. I became intrigued by this area when hosting for the Youbloom music festival at the Hi Hat. Recently I felt the urge to do more exploring there. Interestingly, the very first place I discovered after parking was Wild Terra - an herbal apothecary with a small, carefully curated tea section. They had only been open a week. The owner Danielle Noe and I got talking about a mutual love of tea. She said Earl Grey was her ‘comfort food’ growing up.

The energy. The serendipity. I had to do a blog on this place.

Even better for this tea and entertainment blog, Danielle has a wild background as a special effects makeup artist having worked on some stuff you may have heard of - HBO’s True Blood and the Aquaman film, for example. As a matter of fact, the windows at the back of the shop were from Merlotte’s bar! (see the gallery below) Man, TV and film are everywhere in this town. So cool.

From Bon Temps to Herbs and Tea

Danielle has a clear love for herbs and spices, how they grow and what they can do for the body. Most of what she carries herb-wise is from California and all of it is organic. She even grows some herself. There are two sections of wall dedicated to herbs and spices including 3 types of Holy Basil, Damiana, Mugwort, Skullcap and on and on.

Tea-wise the selection is small but carefully chosen. Some of the teas are from Biodynamic farms, most are organic except for those from Africa which are Fair Trade. She orders directly from some of the estates including Bitaco, a certified organic tea farm from Columbia which has been growing tea for 60 years. Danielle shared their Tippy Negro 2 with me which reminded me of a light Yunnan - smooth and mellow and the color of liquid amber. She has multiple teas from Kenya, including the new purple tea (read more on what that is here). She has an organic Assam from India and some compelling Chinese teas. There are teas from Japan on the way too.

​

Included in the tea wall are Yerba Mate, and the only US native plant with caffeine, Yaupon. It is in the same holly genus as Yerba Mate and Guayusa and contains similar amounts of caffeine. Danielle also carries two types of Coffee Leaf, regular and mango scented. Yes, there is such a thing as coffee leaf that is steeped like tea! Crazy! (I got to do some tasting and will share that part of the experience in a separate post).

​

These Reishi mushrooms look pre historic!

Other Unique Finds

Wild Terra has a variety of mushrooms including whole Reishi mushrooms which look like some pre-historic relic (see pic). She makes tinctures from them too with a triple extraction process:

A 12 hour water extraction

6 week alcohol extraction

Final decoction boiled in water

Wild Terra also carries:

hydrosol waters

unique honeys including US honey and a line from Brazil (I tried a meadowfoam honey that tasted like roasted marshmallow!)

Salves

Books - including one on tea

Teaware

and classes too

So go get your tea and herb on in this little gem in Highland Park! Tell Danielle the Tea Deviant sent you;)​

The adage that there is nothing new under the sun is especially true today with tea. I mean, it takes a lot to surprise me. I’ve seen everything-but-the-kitchen-sink type teas all over the place for a while now (Teavana for example. Is there actually any tea in there?) There is ant tea too...and I accidentally created a tea that tasted like bugs, but don’t worry, I have no intention of marketing my tea fail. Still, I did a double take when I saw this tea hit the Trader Joe’s shelves a couple of weeks back. I love watermelon. It does go well with mint. Mint goes well with tea. Yet, the idea of all three of them dancing in a cup together seemed like something that could go very well or terribly wrong. After having a discussion with one of the awesome employees at my local TJs (I won’t change my TJs because the people there are particularly awesome) I decided I had to make my own assessment.

The black tea was a medium bodied one to my taste. As is often case in the world of shelf tea the ingredients list didn’t help with any origin or other detailed info. It just included ‘black tea’ in the list <sigh>. I think it would take a more deeply trained palate than mine to identify the black leaf behind everything else going on. Oh yeah, the ingredients also include orange peels, the ever vague ‘natural flavors’ and licorice (?!). So I wouldn’t recommend it hot by itself, but once I added honey the sweetness of the watermelon emerged. It was still a little weird, but interesting and fun to taste. I decided to do the full dressing and add milk. It wasn’t gross as some might guess, it was just... not helpful.

My gut instinct is that this tea was made to be iced, but it was in small single serving bags, not pitcher sized ones and included “hot tea by the cup” and “iced tea by the pitcher” directions. I thought I’d start traditional with a hot steep. Even though I would have taken a bet that it needed sweetener to have the best effect I did try it without to start. It tasted more like sucking on watermelon rind with a splash of mint rather than sweet watermelon.

Next I did an iced tea from a hot steep. Again, plain was not the best but I think plain iced was better than plain hot. This time I added amber sugar and it was quite good this way. The mint added a refreshing coolness that went beyond the ice and the sugar was a better fit to the watermelon sweetness than the honey I used in the hot steep (it was a raw honey with a definitive flavor that kind of competed with the watermelon rather than just enhanced it).

Lastly I did a cold steep for 8 hours. I think this was the best of all methods. Though I have come to love some of the tannin release in a hot black tea with milk (and sometimes sweetener) and prefer it to the milder cold brew, with this tea the milder brew allowed the fruit to shine brightest. I dissolved some amber sugar crystals in a little warm water for a quick and dirty simple syrup-like sweetener and added it to the cold brew. Both my friend and I agreed this was a great addition and made for a unique iced tea. I’d toss in the idea of making a spiked version with vodka perhaps or even using it in a cocktail with other fruit flavors.

If you have a curious palate and these flavors are ones you usually like, give this tea spin. Make it for your next cookout or other summer event. It may inspire some interesting conversation.​-Cassandra Vincent